As I revealed in my last shamanic blog, I am going to be resting my Newbies series for a while, although, please do feel free to email me any suggestions for future articles, which you would like to read, as I want to publish a few articles about my experiences in Egypt and my subsequent research.
This being the case, it seems appropriate that my final piece in this series should consider the end of all things – death. Since there was quite a lot to cover on this topic, I decided to split the blog into two parts. In the previous piece, Part 1 (linked here), I provided an introduction to the topic and explored what shamans have taught us about death. This week, in Part 2, I’m going to be looking at the awful consequences of being afraid of death.
Death For Newbies: Part 2
Three women at the parade for Dia de los Muertos at the Festival Des Las Animas
Why do we fear death?
It is, quite simply, an ego thing. Despite the universe having existing for 13.8 billion years before we came along, astonishingly, some of us cannot seem to imagine the world without ourselves.
Amazonian shamans often work extensively with the medicine plant, Ayahuasca, precisely in order to confront their fears of death and to overcome them. If you have a bad experience ingesting the plant, it is quite likely to be in reference to this aspect of your reality. It will appeal to you, perhaps even demand, that you just let go!
But I know that’s tough for some people. It certainly was for me the first time I took Ayahuasca. Although, I had never been to the Peruvian jungle, on some level I recognised the resort, as if I had glimpsed it before – perhaps in a dream? I proceeded to entertain thoughts that I knew the place because of precognition – I was destined to die there. These fears accelerated at the ceremony, so that I entertained thoughts that the Ayahuascheros was deliberately poisoning us. Then, on drinking the potion, I experienced the actual symptoms of being poisoned – cold sweat, stars in my eyes, fading hearing. The following day, a friend helped me to realise that the ayahuasca was playing upon my fear of death. That evening, I accepted that I desperately needed the help of the plant medicine in order to confront and expel these fears.
That sounds like a horrible experience – why is it necessary to confront this fear?
In simple terms, accepting death means that we can find purpose in the here and now – so, stop waiting for the golden era and live your life now!
I don’t think that we confront death very well in our society, particularly in the west, perhaps nowhere more so than in England. At least America has the tradition of open caskets – here, our loved ones are whisked away by an undertaker moments after passing over and the next time we see them, they are safely hidden away from us in a box.
By contrast, Buddhist monks meditate upon corpses, in order to confront their own mortality and to find peace with it.
In J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, it is quite clear that it is Voldemort’s obsession with cheating death, which is at the root of his evil. Voldemort does not form friendships or find love precisely because he is all-consumed by his quest, which saps his very humanity. Don’t be like Voldemort!
So, a fear of death can make you do evil things?
Yes. I firmly believe that fear of death is responsible for much of the evil in the world and that it explains a great deal of religious violence. Furthermore, I’m afraid that the Holy books of our key religions have only served to stoke these fears, in order to seek out new adherents or to retain their followers.
Thus, Christianity should hang its head in shame for the Bible’s part in the Inquisition, the Crusades, the persecution and murder of ‘witches’, or for encouraging its own fair share of racist, misogynistic, homophobic zealots. Whilst, if we ask the question why there is currently so much religious violence committed by those of the Islamic faith, we need look no further than the Koran, for no other scripture has devoted so much time to both the terrors of Hell and the pleasures of Paradise.
This focus, in the key Abrahamic texts, on the utter importance of preparing for an afterlife has a terrible knock-on effect – that its followers are so fearful of death that they are compelled to violently reject those who do not believe as they do, for ‘infidels’ threaten the story to which they have devoted their entire lives.
Richard Dawkins has said that the only thing that can make good men do evil things is religion. This is how religion does so, by stating that only by following their particular code can you get to Heaven and fear of that being the case drives the intolerance and violence that so often mars this beautiful planet.
Why is that?
Because if I do not follow your religion, I directly undermine your belief system’s teachings on an afterlife and your abject fear of death leads to your intolerance and hate of me and my kind.
It does strike me as a curious thing, however, that we have not been able to move beyond these fears. Perhaps, as Dawkins and others have suggested, we are ‘hardwired’ to believe in God and an afterlife. Yet it does seem to be uniquely human, after all, we do not share this trait with our cousins in the animal kingdom. As Yuval Noah Harari has written, ‘You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven’.
What if I have regrets at the end?
The last words of Leonardo da Vinci (2ndMay 1519) are recorded as: ‘I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.’ If that remarkable artist, scientist and engineer, da Vinci, felt that he did not live up to expectations, doesn’t it feel like the rest of us are doomed to failure?
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative nurse, recorded ‘The Top Five regrets of the Dying’ in a book after her blog on her experiences went viral. The five key regrets were:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a true life to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.
If you feel that you are edging towards such regrets, I urge you to take action, now!
The mythologist and writer, Joseph Campbell, saw the greatest human transgression as, ‘the sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, not quite awake’. His philosophy on life was: ‘Follow your bliss’.
What is your advice?
Elizabeth I’s alleged final words (24 March 1603) were: ‘All my possessions for a moment of time.’ Learn from one of our greatest queens – life is too precious – don’t waste your precious time!
So, what is the meaning of our existence?
Better philosophers and poets than myself have tried to answer this one. So, let’s hear from a few of them!
Carl Jung said in his Joy of Life, ‘As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being’.
The great Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote:
‘I am the eye with which the universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine’.
The physics and astronomy professor, Ray Jayawardhana, has suggested that we should not forget the beautiful truth – that we are stardust: ‘The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones and the oxygen we breathe are the physical remains, ashes if you will, of stars that lived and died long ago.’
If we are made of stardust, then this is a wonderful concept and connects us to the universe in a profound way.
Yet, perhaps there is something even more than this beautiful notion? I remember a precious moment on a trip to Peru when, lying on our backs, looking up at the amazing vista of stars, along with some friends and my teacher and shaman friend, Chris Waters, I quoted Rainer Maria Rilke, who, in Buddha in Glory, wrote:
‘A billion stars go spinning through the night,
Blazing above your head.
But in you is the presence that will be,
When all the stars are dead.’